Tesseract a next generation motion planning framework for industrial applications.

‍Already using MoveIt2? Tesseract is designed as your next-generation motion planning framework—reusing your ROS infrastructure while upgrading your planning, optimization, and environment model.

MoveIt2 has been the default choice for ROS motion planning for many years.

Tesseract is designed to be the next-generation motion planning framework for industrial applications.**

If you are starting a new project today and care about process quality, cycle time, and long-term maintainability, Tesseract is ready to step in and delivery on those requirements today.

High-Level Positioning

MoveIt2: general-purpose motion planning for ROS, great for bring-up, research, and many manipulation tasks.
Tesseract: a modern, optimization-centric planning framework engineered for industrial cells and process-driven workflows**—with the architectural choices, performance characteristics, and integration points to match.

Comparison Overview

The following table summarizes the positioning of Tesseract and MoveIt2.

Framework Comparison

Aspect	Tesseract	MoveIt2
Primary focus	Industrial process planning & optimization	General-purpose motion planning in ROS
Planning philosophy	Optimization-first (costs & constraints solved together)	Sampling-first, then smoothing / time-parameterize
Environment model	Scene graph + command history; easy cloning & replay	Central planning scene integrated with ROS
Collision handling	Contact-rich, continuous & discrete; designed for optimizers	Primarily collision checks for sampling planners
Integration model	ROS-agnostic core, ROS as a thin layer	ROS-native, ROS tightly integrated
Target usage	Production cells, process quality, traceability & uptime	Bring-up, prototyping, broad manipulation tasks

Why Choose Tesseract for New Development

Tesseract is intended to be the default choice when:

You are building new industrial robotics products or cells
Motion quality directly impacts product quality, scrap, and cycle time
You expect to scale across multiple cells, lines, or facilities
You need a planning core that can live inside ROS, but also outside of it

If you are starting from scratch:

‍Start with Tesseract. You get an architecture designed for industrial use from day one—without fighting the limitations of a framework that was not optimized for your workload.

Migration and Coexistence

Already using MoveIt2?

You can run Tesseract alongside or as an alternative to MoveIt2,using Tesseract to plan specific processes or cells.
Over time, you can standardize on Tesseract as your primary motion and process planning engine, while keeping ROS and other infrastructure investments intact.